Technex 2001

1^st- 4^th March
BHU, Varanashi, India

This year in the Annual Technical Festival of Institute of Technology, Banaras Hindu University(ITBHU), Technex 2001, the GIS and Remote-Sensing workshop was among the prime attractions. Vivek Slaria, the convenor of Technex-2001 informs that, " the workshop was aimed at generating awareness among the University students, faculty members, and common public about the potential of Geoinformatics technologies." The workshop was attended by many, including around 100 registered participants.

The main attraction of the workshop was the keynote address by Prof. B.L. Deekshatulu, director CSSTE-AP, Dehradun. Prof. Deekshatulu spoke about the advances in GIS and how GIS is going to play a major role in our life in coming future, particularly when GIS is being integrated with mobile internet, GPS and various decision support systems.

Among the other attractions were the lecture on Digital Image Processing by Dr. Bharat Lohani, a faculty member in ITBHU and a slide show on application of remote sensing in floods and pipeline monitoring by a team of B-Tech students.

The technical presentation by ESRI India was appreciated by all. Mr. Rupesh Punjani ESRI(India) starting from the basics of GIS demonstrated the various GIS tools made availble by the company and their functionalities.

Navin Keswani, the convenor of the workshop says that" the interest shown by important organisations like CSDMS, which provided participants with a free issue of their publication GIS@development and ESRI who distributed informative literature, was a highly satisfying experience"

Dr. Lohani lauds the efforts of students and puts emphasis that " this workshop was the first of its kind in BHU campus and will help in arousing interest about Geoinformatic technology in the University and surrounding region". Dr. Lohani further informs that the Department of Civil-Engineering is establishing a Geoinformatics laboratory with an initial grant of Rs. 25 lakh from the Department of Science and Technology(DST).This is the first major Geoinformatics facility coming up in the BHU campus which will benefit several departments of the campus.

Ashish Khattri, the workshop co-ordinator says"the workshop was successful in providing a platform to the University and outside community for interaction with academicians and industry people".